Page 40 of Tell Me Something True

Knowledge was power and Verity was already the smartest of them all. She didn’t need any more ammunition to use against them.

Not that it was a secret that Urban and Willow were made for each other. They’d been hiding their feelings for each other half their lives. Miles wouldn’t be surprised if they circled each other for another sixteen or so.

That sort of habit was hard to break.

“I’m going to shower,” he grumbled, then turned and went back inside.

In his bathroom, he turned on the water, locked the door, then stripped. He didn’t need to bathe—he was still squeaky clean from last night.

He was hiding.

He needed to clear his head, wanted to empty it of any and all recollection of the past eight hours, but the moment he stepped under the shower, he was bombarded with the memory of Tabitha behind him. Of how she’d washed him, her hands in his hair.

How she’d taken care of him.

He washed himself with rough, brisk strokes, erasing her touch from his skin.

She’d used him. She’d come to the bar last night for the sole purpose of fucking with him.

And no, he couldn’t explain how he’d come to that conclusion.

Only that he was holding onto it no matter what.

She’d thought the worst of him.

You know how she grew up, his inner voice whispered.

Mouth a thin line, he ducked his head under the water. He knew she’d been taken from her mother’s care at the age of eight. But he didn’t know what her life was like before that. Didn’t know what she went through while in the system.

But he’d been a cop long enough, had seen enough, to be able to guess.

Had tried to help enough victims of neglect and abuse to understand why she might mistrust him enough to think he’d lure a young girl to his house.

He was the one who’d kept telling her how much he’d changed.

After drying off, he went into his room and got dressed. The best thing he could do now was accept last night for what it was. What he hadn’t even known he’d wanted or needed after all these years.

Closure.

He’d accept it. And then he’d forget it ever even happened.

He’d forget her.

Again.

He ran his fingers through his hair as he stepped into the hall.

And didn’t so much as glance at that fucking couch as he made his way through his living room.

The scent of freshly brewed coffee hit him as he entered the kitchen. Verity, sitting on a stool at the bar reading The Mount Laurel Gazette, looked up.

“About time,” she said as she stood. “I’m starving and I have to be at Kat and Ian’s in half an hour—which means you get to drive me there as it’s a ten-minute bike ride. You took so long, I thought maybe you’d tried to drown yourself over that humiliating scene. You know,” she continued, as she got plates from the cupboard, “the one where the woman you hooked up with last night ran out of your house like an escaped kidnap victim and then accused you of being the worst kind of creeper?”

He shut his eyes against the headache throbbing at his temples. Yeah. He knew which humiliating scene she meant. Jesus. “Why are you here?”

She hadn’t texted him to let him know she was coming over. And, as she’d just said, she had to be at Kat’s by seven. Verity watched Ian, their brother Silas’s son, while Katarina Caputo, his mother, worked at the Keystone Diner by the lake. Which meant for Verity to be here now, she must’ve gotten up before five-thirty.

“Is that any way to treat your favorite sibling? I got up early, rode my bike all the way to St. Honore’s—which as you well know, is two miles in the opposite direction of your house,” she continued, voice rising as she poured coffee into a mug. “And why would I do such a generous, selfless act at the ungodly hour of six a.m., you might ask?”

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